ISIS Claim Responsibility for Its First Attack in Israel

ISIS has claimed responsibility for a shooting and stabbing terror attack which resulted in the death of an Israeli policewoman.

Hadas Malka, 23, a staff sergeant major, was fatally stabbed in Jerusalem and it is the first time ISIS has said it was behind an attack in the city.

But the claim, which came with the jihadists facing defeat in their Iraq and Syria bastions, was swiftly dismissed by Palestinian militant groups.

Israeli police said three Palestinians attacked officers at Damascus Gate in annexed east Jerusalem late on Friday before being shot dead by security forces.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the IS claim was an attempt to ‘muddy the waters’, adding that the attack was carried out by ‘two Palestinians from the PFLP and a third from Hamas’.

The killing was ‘a natural response to the crimes of the occupier,’ he said, echoing the language used by Hamas after other recent attacks in Israel.

Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency identified the three assailants as Braa Salah, born in 1998, Adel Ankush, born 1999, and Asama Atta, born 1998, all from the village of Deir Abu Mashal near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The Shin Bet said they had been previously been implicated in ‘terror activity’.

The PFLP said Salah and Atta had recently been released from several months in Israeli prison.

The names differ from those reported by IS, who said the attack was carried out by brothers called Abu al-Bara’a al-Maqdisi, Abu Hassan al-Maqdisi, and Abu Rabah al-Maqdisi.

Medics said four people besides the officer were wounded in the incident. Two of them were Palestinians from east Jerusalem.

A Palestinian from the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron, initially thought to be a fourth assailant and was shot and wounded, turned out to be an innocent passerby, Israeli police said.

Israel had eased restrictions on the entry of Palestinians from the West Bank to Jerusalem for Ramadan.